Mindful Hack

The Mindful Hack is a Web log of Denyse O'Leary, co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (HarperOne August 2007). The Mindful Hack publishes information of interest on the relationship between the mind and the brain. O'Leary also publishes the Post-Darwinist, which keeps up with the intelligent design controversy.

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Monday, January 05, 2009

Music is an earworm. No wait, it is evolutionary cheesecake. Oh, wait, just a minute .... This just in ...

Driving back with friends from Ottawa to Toronto recently, I managed to catch this program where a CBC journalist interviewed humanist neurologist Oliver Sacks on the subject of music. Sacks disagrees with Harvard's Steve Pinker, who claims that music is evolutionary cheesecake but then he stops midway through the program and makes a big pitch for materialism that completely goes against everything else he has said. And of course music could just be an earworm after all ....

The only thing music cannot be, apparently, is a hint that there is more to life than nature red in tooth and claw.

Here's the interview. Funny, these people would pick the Year of Completely Ridiculous Darwin Hagiography to just fall apart intellectually. Some big changes are obviously happening.

Look at that middle story: I wonder whether a study detailing how gossip isn't good for you – relative to minding your own business and getting on with the job at hand - would see the light of day ... ?

One thing to note about EP is its utter predictability. It always seems to be about whatever foolishness is noised about in pop culture. If the talk show circuit likes it, it is definitely science. And who could possibly argue with that?

It certainly never seems to be about anything that provides real insight into human nature. But then it couldn't be, could it?

See also: Recently, a friend sent me this Google alert for "evolutionary psychology" (Similar nutty stories)

Go here for other stories on evolutionary psychology (scroll down to second and following).